Special Operations Command leads propaganda fight

2:53PM EST December 6. 2012 - WASHINGTON — The military's Special Operations Command has become an emerging player in the Pentagon's propaganda efforts to confront violent extremists around the world, according to documents and a new report from a non-partisan think tank.

Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, directs the military's elite commando units — the Navy's SEALs and Army's Delta Force — in counterterrorism missions. SOCOM, as it is known, conducted the operation to kill Osama bin Laden and dealt bloody blows to insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Key to its propaganda efforts is a collection of websites known as the Trans Regional Web Initiative aimed at foreign audiences. USA TODAY first reported on its existence in 2008, and it appears to have expanded.

Some of those websites and blogs are classified programs and appear without attribution, according to a report released to USA TODAY, titled "The Pentagon as Pitchman: Perception and Reality of Public Diplomacy." The report, by the non-partisan Stimson Center, examines the military's growing role in shaping perceptions about the United States around the world.

1. The Constitution did not accommodate or plan for a standing army.

Our huge military bureaucracy is overwhelming the rest of our government.

I don't know what can be done about it, but you might as well throw away the rest of the Constitution as long as we have unelected people who control the physical force of our nation and who just kind of run on their own track alongside our constitutional government. It is just crazy.

I have no suggestions for how to solve the problem.

No president can be strong or popular enough to deal with it, and clever military leaders schooled in strategy (an naturally prone to be strategists) can outsmart and divide Congress with no problem.

As for the Supreme Court, they have little to say about the military.

So we have a serious problem here that endangers our constitutional government. But we need a strong military. So what to do???????

Does anyone else have any ideas.

It isn't a matter of bad apples or bad people. It is a messed up system.